Two idiots bobbing in the ocean. The other idiot might take exception to that, but I’m the one writing the column, and the truth is the truth.

And just when you thought it was safe to head back into the swamp. Out of the Everglades comes the most fascinating, horrifying, terror-inducing, and just plain “Holy refried hoppenjohns” story I’ve heard in a long while. From the Associated Press: “Python bursts after trying to eat gator.”

I’m a list addict, a list junkie, a list maniac. My office, my desk and my house often look like a ticker tape parade thanks to notes I leave everywhere. So terrified I will forget something (if there was a fire in the kitchen, I would probably make a list), I scribble endlessly, trying in vain to keep myself in line.

There is no better city in the world than New York, let’s just get that straight. I could get lost there and be happy for the rest of my life. Stick this Southern boy in a hot, airless subway and I could be perfectly content. I’ll pay ridiculous prices, and feel I’m getting a deal. I’ll get slammed hard by someone on the street, and thank them for the experience. I’ve never felt a pulse like New York. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to getting struck by lightning — a rush of energy through my body that makes me think, “I’m alive! … or fried like chicken.” That’s New York. My wife (the pregnant one) and I went to the Big Apple for a last hurrah before the baby comes, and to celebrate her birthday (won’t say how old as the Surgeon General warns against it.) The thing about life I’ve learned is this: Find a partner you can travel well with and you’ll never be unhappy. I’m very lucky, in that respect, and it holds true even when pregnant. Although, when you need a pry-bar getting in and out of a cab, it tends to slow things down a bit. But I’m proud to say she never got stuck in a revolving door or a subway turnstile, as I feared. (She’s done it even when NOT pregnant.) New York is fun with woman-carrying-child because it comes with power. You’re on a crowded subway, buried so deep from […]

What did we used to do in the days before E-mail, and by golly, can we please go back? Yes, I’m asking you sweet world to take this evil device for conveying messages and flush it down the great mystical commode from whence it came. You heard me correctly. Even a son of technology, a child raised on the microchip, reared on the digital, trained on the mouse, married to the great World Wide Web has said it. Take it away! I’m done with it. I’m carpal tunneled out, my poor hands crippled. Sure, E-mail can be a wonderful thing. But it’s also an undeniable scourge. A creeping virus. An addiction. The equivalent of electronic kudzu, spreading, growing, infecting, overwhelming, suffocating, driving me mad. If my office door is ever closed, it’s because I’m in there working like a fiend, typing like a mad man, trying desperately to reduce my electronic pile to something manageable. “A-Ha!” I emerge triumphantly 18 hours later, my fingers gnarled-up, twisted and twitching. “I’ve reduced my inbox from 32,000 messages to a much more manageable 31,892. I now have a date with 17 martinis.” I return and they’re back. That’s why I’m proposing an E-mail-out Day, a great blackout for E-mail when we all swear an oath — as a nation and a world — to silence the E-mail airwaves for one day. We will all recover and drink beer in harmony, and not a soul will click send. Just a little relief is all […]

Surf’s up and I went down, over and over again. But boy was it fun. I think I’ve found a sport where even taking a spill is enjoyable. (I face-planted so many waves, my nose is crumpled up.)

Could it be my mother really isn’t faking? That she’s not crazy, but just afflicted with the serious disease known as eccentricity-itis?

Why is it that guys always wear pain like some fashion statement? It’s a source of pride, a bragging right. “Ouch, yeah. Feels good. I’m cool.”